There is a fit & happier person inside everyone

Monthly Archives: February 2016

Fitness is a lifestyle not a diet or exercise program with an end date. Even making changes in small, manageable increments, as my Small Steps series advocates, doesn’t guarantee one won’t get derailed, especially if she is relying only on willpower and well-intended plans. What’s needed is an environment that promotes a healthy lifestyle and reduces the situations in which one gets pulled back into old, unhealthy habits. This month, your challenge is to make simple, permanent changes in your environment that enable positive fitness behavior while eliminating the negative influences in your fitness quest.

What follows are considerations for the most common environmental pitfalls and how to turn them into advantages for you. Weaknesses vary from person to person. For some, having ice cream in the house isn’t much of a temptation. For others, it’s impossible to resist on a regular basis.

Therefore, it’s important to take an honest, thorough assessment of the obstacles that present the biggest challenges to fitness for you. You might identify some challenges that aren’t listed here. You can use my examples to come up with your own strategies to manipulate your environment to thwart those pitfalls as well.

Make the foods that tempt you hard to get and the healthy ones easy to get:

Purge your home, vehicle and office of junk food:

Candy, chips, soft drinks and baked goods are obvious culprits.

Some foods may seem healthy at first glance but are actually loaded with simple carbohydrates, like flours and sugars, with little to no protein, fiber or healthy fats. These foods are quickly absorbed by the body, causing glucose levels to sky-rocket and then plummet, causing a drop in energy levels and hunger to return. While that 100 calorie pretzel snack pack may seem like a good choice, if you’re back at the snack bin in 30 minutes consuming another 100 calories (or more) you’re no better off than if you’d eaten a candy bar. Crackers, white breads, fruit bars, cereal bars and some granola bars and yogurts fall into this category.

Stock up on quality snacks and be sure to always have some on hand so you’re ready when hunger strikes between meal:

Snacks that have protein, complex carbohydrates, fats and fiber give you sustained energy and make you feel ore satisfied for a longer period of time. Think whole foods like nuts, seeds, dairy and whole fruits and vegetables.

If you’re buying pre-packaged snacks, read food labels. What you’re looking for is protein and fiber with low amounts of refined flour and sweeteners.

Know your bad eating habit triggers: We all have our moments of weakness. It’s at these times that the pull is very strong to slide back into bad habits.

Time of day: A mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack shouldn’t be avoided. But be prepared with correctly portioned, high-quality snacks in order to avoid poor snack choices. On the other hand, snacking in the evenings is rarely a good idea. If you’ve eaten three meals and a few snacks in a day, chances are you’ve consumed all the calories and nutrients your body needs. Try flossing and brushing your teeth after dinner. This does two things. First, it creates an annoying inconvenience if you eat something – you’ll have to floss and brush again. Secondly, it’s a physical signal to your brain that eating is done for the day and it’s time to prepare for sleep.

Mindless eating: Eating while distracted by something else – TV, reading material, electronic devices – is a recipe for over-consumption of calories. You aren’t paying attention to what you’re eating, so you over eat. It also creates a trigger by association. If you eat breakfast in front of the TV every day, your body associates eating with watching TV at other times of the day, tricking you into thinking you’re hungry when you’re not. Make it a rule to eat all meals and snacks at a table without distractions.

Emotional eating: Emotional eating means you self-medicate with food at times when you’re most vulnerable – stressed, sad, angry or even bored. These vulnerable times are weaknesses at their very peak. This is why emotional eating is such a tough habit to break. Try taking a walk or going up and down a flight of stairs. Call or instant message a trusted confidant. Take a warm shower, bath or wash your face. Practice meditation, relaxation and breathing exercises, or journaling. Find another physical stimulation, outside of food, to break the funk.

Always be ready to be active: You can’t take advantage of a spontaneous invitation to take a walk or a free hour to head to the gym courtesy of a last-minute lunch date cancelation if you’re wearing a skirt and heels. Always have a bag with sneakers and workout clothing in your car or at your office.

Manipulate your social environment: Nothing influences our behavior, good and bad, more than the people around us. Take inventory of the people in your life – friends, family and co-workers – and place them into one of two categories: good influencers and bad influencers. People who are fit or are actively working to be fit are your good influencers and those who are not fit or not actively trying are your bad influencers.

Harness the good influencers: Tell them about your quest to be fit and your willingness to enlist their help and support. You’re likely to find new workout partners and people with whom to exchange healthy recipes.

Limit the damage of bad influencers: This isn’t about cutting loved ones from your life, it’s about changing what you do when you’re together. They, like the good influencers, need to be told about your quest to be fit. Ideally, you’d enlist them to partner with you, but many won’t be receptive. If you can’t recruit them, social gatherings with your bad influencers should avoid food as much as possible. Arrange phone chats while you’re out exercising. If you’re spending time together in person, go shopping, get mani/pedis, go to a museum, movie or on a relaxing stroll through a park. Find something you enjoy doing together that doesn’t involve food.

If you’re new to the Small Steps series, you can read about the philosophy and strategies of the series here. Know the Small Steps strategies don’t need to be done in any particular order and are independent of one another. So, you can begin the series with this post, continue throughout the rest of the year and pick up what you missed next year.

Ever since news came out that the US military is ditching sit-ups and ab crunches for planks in their training programs, my clients have been asking me if they should be ditching them too. You may also be wondering if you should stop doing crunches. So, here’s a little Ab Strengthening 101 to help you sort fact from fiction and make sound decisions on how to strengthen your core safely.

Core Facts

When considering strength training for any muscle group, we have to ask ourselves what is the primary function of the muscle group because knowing this will tell us the most effective and safe way to train it. In this case, abdominal muscles are a set of muscles layered in the abdomen – rectus abdominis, transverse abdominis and internal and external obliques – that are themselves part of the group known as the core. The rest of the core, erector spinae and multifidi, are muscles that run along both sides of the spinal column. The primary purpose of the core is stabilization.

A strong core provides optimal stabilizing to absorb stresses so that the muscle groups that are designed for movement – such as the hips and shoulders – can function properly and without unnecessary strain. In the abdomen, the deepest muscles, the transverse abdominis, form a box of horizontal fibers that are most responsible for the bracing function. What that tells us is the core muscles as a whole, and the transverse abdominis specifically, are best (and safest) strengthened through a stabilizing function rather than through movement. This should bring to mind such exercises as planks, glute bridges, stability ball work and many yoga poses.

Secondarily, these muscles are also responsible for small movements that are generated at the torso: twisting and lateral flexion (bending sideways at the waist to get in or out of a car), flexing the abdomen (getting up from lying on your back) and extending the back (reaching for something overhead). Bicycle crunches, ab curls/modified crunches and supermans are strengthening exercises that mimic each of these functional movements, respectively.

But these are targeted strengthening movements. Unlike planks and other core stabilizing strengthening exercises that work all muscles of the core, bicycle crunches work the obliques in isolation, ab curls/crunches work the rectus abdominis in isolation and supermans work the erector spinae and multifidi in isolation. Working only one set of a muscle group in isolation creates an imbalance where the other muscles become weaker over time. If you want to avoid this imbalance, you must either do whole core exercises (such as planks) or do a series of exercises to target each of the core muscles in isolation.

Risk vs Reward

All exercise has risk. Some are riskier than others. And this is what the military took into consideration when deciding how best to build a strong core during training. Here are common abdominal strengthening exercises listed from most risky to least risky in terms of injury, particularly to the lower back and neck:

Sit ups: repeatedly lifting entire torso from floor to seated position and lowering back to floor

Full Abdominal Crunches: repeatedly lifting head, neck & upper back off floor and lowering back to floor (pictured above)

Ab Curls/Modified Crunches: shoulders stay lifted off the floor by bracing the abs with repeated small pulses/crunches in this position (pictured below)

Bicycle Crunches: assume same position as curls with torso twisting from side to side

Planks: either on forearms or hands as well as side planks (forearm plank 2nd picture below)

Ab Curl/Modified Crunch Conditionally Okay

And, of course, what is the point of exercise without reward? Exercise scientists have used monitoring devices to detect muscle engagement during abdominal exercises to measure which exercises engage the most muscle fibers and, therefore, strengthen the targeted muscles best. The following are the same common abdominal strengthening exercises listed from least effective to most effective, also listed are all the core muscles that are worked in each exercise:

And this explains why the military made the decision they did – planks strengthen all the muscles of the core equally, more efficiently and with less risk for back and neck injury than sit ups or crunches.

Bottom Line

No one should do sit ups or full abdominal crunches. Neither has shown any real benefit to core strengthening but both are associated with a high risk of lower back and neck pain and injury.

I personally see a value in ab curls/modified crunches and bicycle crunches in that they do strengthen muscles that are responsible for functional trunk movement. But they must be done with perfect form and in conjunction with back strengthening exercises (such as supermans and birddog) as well as whole core exercises, like planks, in order to be safe and effective. If, however, you already have lower back or neck problems, I recommend using other exercises to strengthen the core that won’t put undo stress on the spine.

Keep in mind that planks done incorrectly can cause serious injury as well. As with all strength-training exercises, quality is more important than quantity. Perfect form is the best insurance against injury. Click here for visual and written instructions from ACE Fitness on performing the exercises listed in this blog as well as more suggestions for ab and core strengthening exercises.

I’ve written about this before, we have this strange dichotomy in fitness in the United States. With exercise, it seems like there are predominantly two groups of people – those who are sedentary versus those who are engaged in extreme exercise whether it’s CrossFit, triathlons, marathons or Iron Men. Similar, too, with diet. We seem to have a large percentage of the population consuming copious amounts of highly processed foods countered by another significant group of people hopping between cleanses and restrictive diets. Where is the balance?

I was reminded of this today when I read “Running Less Can Actually Be Good for Your Body” by Shape Magazine and posted on Popsugar. It’s a story of a woman who fell in love with running and competed in half-marathons for years before stumbling upon the realization that it wasn’t healthy for her anymore. Good for her for finding her way. If only more would.

Somewhere between the two extremes of both diet and exercise lies, I believe, the one and only path to true fitness. I think there are many of us living in this healthy balance. But, we are a quiet bunch, minding our own business, exercising and eating under the radar.

By definition, living between the extremes means we don’t get noticed. My 2.5 miles once per week runs aren’t jaw-dropping like the daily double-digit miles logged by a marathoner in training. It would get a ho-hum reaction on social media, at best. Ditto my diet that includes such untrendy foods as red meat, dairy, gluten, refined sugar, butter and bread.

Is there no wonder that the many sedentary who are subsisting off of too many nutritionally bankrupt calories say to themselves, “if getting healthy means that I have to run 15 miles a day and live off of kale juice and vegan cheeseburgers, I’d rather be unhealthy”? I think if I believed those were my only two choices, I’d pick unhealthy too.

You want the truth? You shouldn’t be sitting on the couch or at a desk or in a car all day long. You should exercise and do it regularly. But you don’t have to run 26.2 miles or even 13.1. And, frankly, running those distances regularly without any other form of exercise isn’t exactly the fittest way to go either. Beefaroni isn’t and never will be healthy for you. You probably shouldn’t eat it. But, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a sensibly portioned cut of beef served with roasted potato and a side of whatever vegetable you like. A meatless version of that meal would have far less complete protein, iron, folate, magnesium and potassium in comparison. Yet, I would also recommend having meals that include fish, poultry, legumes and dairy the rest of the week to obtain high amounts of other nutrients the beef meal is short on.

You see, balance is the key. But, balance is vanilla, plain Jane, medium. It isn’t sexy, it’s not controversial. It won’t cause a stir and it can’t be lorded over others. This is why it doesn’t often get noticed or even promoted by those who know better.

But, I promote it because I live it and I believe in it. Doing my best to live a balanced life – through exercise and diet – over the last twenty-five years has made me the fittest I’ve ever been in my life. I am strong and I have stamina. My moods are more even and I sleep better. It has given me confidence and a knowledge about what I’m capable of accomplishing. In short, fitness has made me a happier, better person.

{Note I did not say fitness has made me thinner or lighter – that’s an important distinction and one that often gets lost whenever society speaks of diet and exercise.}

This is why I developed my Small Stepsseries. It is the tool I use to teach people how to achieve fitness through balance. Which is not to suggest that it’s easy. Living a fit life takes practice, effort and persistence. But, the difference between the Small Steps approach and the approach of those at the extreme ends of diet and exercise is that my strategy is sustainable for a lifetime.

The exercise doesn’t require hours of time daily and is moderate enough to have a much smaller risk of injury. The diet suggestions don’t require abstaining from groups of foods. Rather, it’s about learning how to choose the most nutrient-rich options of all the food groups and to eat them in the proper proportions. While not easy, finding a balanced road to fitness is so much easier than marathon-ing or juicing your way to fitness.

We may find ourselves enamored of the great feats endurance athletes achieve and marveling over the willpower of those shunning sugar and flour. But here’s what the social media snapshots of those living at the extreme ends of exercise and diet don’t show us: the physical and psychological setbacks, the hours upon hours of training, and time missed with family or the hunger and cravings, the eating and body image disorders, and the narrowing of one’s social life for the purpose of avoiding forbidden foods. How can that possibly be a balanced, healthy life?

To assist you with the “Planning Ahead” strategy in this month’s Small Steps series, here is a primer on setting fitness goals.

SMART – The Gold Standard of Goal Setting

The SMART principle states that goals must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.

Specific: Clearly state what will be accomplished.

Measurable: There must be a way to know if you are on target as you progress.

Attainable: Goals have to be psychologically realistic and physically safe for you.

Relevant: Goals have to match your needs, abilities and interests.

Time-Bound: By definition, goal-setting can’t remain open-ended.

To the SMART principle I also add the necessity for planning and accountability. Planning is the strategy that you will use to implement your SMART goals. Accountability is important because it’s much more difficult to quit if you’ve recruited others to be invested in your fitness goals.

Jane is a 50 year old mom of three school-aged children. She works part-time while her children are in school. At the end of 2015, she went to her doctor for a check-up and learned she’s pre-diabetic. The appointment also revealed she’s 20 pounds overweight. Her doctor said she can avoid full-blown diabetes through diet and exercise if she takes steps soon.

Jane has dieted and exercised on-and-off several times before but wasn’t able to stick to either. But the sobering news at her appointment has convinced her she needs to take control of her health. She made a 2016 New Years Resolution to start exercising and eat more healthfully to lose weight. She purchased a membership for the month of January to a local gym and decided to give up all sweets and eat more fruits and vegetables.

Jane took a few classes at the gym the first week. The only ones offered when she had availability were very crowded and felt too advanced for her. Mid-way through the month, she decided to workout on machines instead and was able to do that a few times but hasn’t been back to the gym since.

She has done a good job of eating more produce and trying to control her portions. She did lose a few pounds in the first few weeks. Her son celebrated a birthday in late January and she overindulged. Since then, her cravings for desserts have increased. She gained back a pound within the last week and is discouraged. She’s come to me for help.

Jane is struggling because her goals are too vague, she has no specific plan and she hasn’t set up a system of accountability. In my first meeting with her we’d set up SMART goals together and develope a strategy and accountability to support them. Here’s what Jane’s SMART goals might look like:

Specific: Jane will lose 20 pounds and lower her blood glucose level by making her diet more healthy through better food choices and portion control and exercising for one hour at least 3 days each week.

Measurable: Jane will average one pound of weight-loss per week. She will weigh herself twice a week to keep tabs on her progress. Her fasting blood glucose level needs to drop 5 mg/Dl or more to fall within the normal range. She has a follow-up appointment with her doctor in six months when she’ll have another blood test done and her weight checked.

Attainable: Jane’s average of one pound of weigh-loss per week is safe and reasonable. At that rate, it’s possible for her to reach her weight-loss goal of 20 pounds when she sees her physician in six months. Her fasting blood glucose goal of a drop of 5 mg/Dl is a modest reduction and can be achieved in six months for most otherwise healthy individuals through weight-loss and exercise. Jane has an hour of time that she can devote to exercise on most weekdays and more time on weekends.

Relevant:

Diet: Jane likes fruits and vegetables, so the goal of substituting less healthy choices with her favorite produce is relevant. She has done research on proper portions to keep from over-indulging at meal and snack times. But, Jane’s original mistake with her New Years Resolution was depriving herself of treats which she often craves. So her new plan will include very small portions of high quality sweets when she craves them.

Exercise: A membership to the local large gym isn’t a good fit for Jane. She doesn’t enjoy using cardio machines and the classes they offer when she is available to exercise aren’t at the right level or the kinds of classes she likes. She has enjoyed dance all her life. A smaller studio in her area that offers dance-based fitness classes in the mornings before work is a much better fit. In addition, Jane has a friend who is also looking to get into an exercise routine. Jane will schedule walks with her one or two days a week. She’ll meet with me once per week. Together we’ll develop a strength training routine that she can also do on her own at home. Building muscle will help boost her metabolism to assist in weight loss.

Time-Bound: Her follow-up with her physician in 6 months is her goal date. Because she is keeping tabs on her weight along the way, she can use those data points to make adjustments to her plan to ensure she stays on track to reach her goal when the date arrives.

Plan: She’ll plan out meals and snacks for the up-coming week on the weekends. She’ll also schedule all her workouts on her calendar. Each week, we’ll evaluate together how she’s progressing, assess what is and isn’t working and make adjustments accordingly.

Accountability: Ultimately, Jane is accountable to herself for her health. But, knowing she’s also accountable to her doctor, trainer, exercise studio and walking friend is external motivation at times when her internal motivation is challenged.

In all your fitness endeavors, remember the SMART principle to strategize yourself to success.

Just as we can’t “wing it” when it comes to work, parental obligations and important appointments on our calendars, so it is true with fitness. To say, “I will go to the gym 3 times a week and eat 3 healthy meals a day,” without a concrete plan for how you will accomplish that is to set yourself up for failure. We must have a strategy for exercise and healthy eating if we are to have a realistic chance of living a lifetime of fitness. Planning ahead is this month’s Small Step strategy.

Planning Ahead for Exercise

Here’s the tricky thing about converting yourself from a person who doesn’t exercise to one who exercises regularly: Exercise usually isn’t enjoyable until one is doing it regularly.

What happens often is motivation is high for the first two weeks and then a workout or two are skipped. Eventually, an entire week goes by without an exercise session and the person gives up. But, if a person can get into a regular routine early on and, in the process, find a few types of workouts that speak to her, the positive workout effects begin to kick in and then it’s much less of a struggle to get psyched up for the next workout. (You can read about this phenomenon in That Elusive A-ha Fitness Moment.)

Therefore, the first month is critical to setting this groundwork. You must:

Devise a concrete, specific plan. Outline in writing: when you’ll workout, how long the sessions will be and what you’ll do for your workouts.

Schedule workouts on your calendar. Schedule them at times when they’re unlikely to get bumped.

Aim for a workout every-other-day. It may seem like a lot but this regularity will jump-start your exercise routine and you’ll begin to see and feel positive results in short order. These results are what converts the sedentary to regular exercisers.

Any type of exercise counts as a workout: brisk walking, yoga class, strength training workout, martial arts, dance. Mix it up, variety is great when it comes to exercise. But the key is to do workouts that you enjoy, you’re more likely to stick with it. If you already have one or more go-to workouts that are enjoyable and accessible for you, you’re way ahead of the game.

But, most who aren’t working out regularly haven’t found something they enjoy. This is the month to treat this like a buffet. Try one or more of the following this month: get a one-month or week to week access to a gym that offers classes or equipment that you’d like to try; schedule a session or two with a personal trainer; take advantage of a nearby studio that may offer specific classes such as yoga, mat Pilates, Spin or Zumba; try some online or DVD workouts that interest you or possibly a training app. And be sure to schedule a couple of walks in your neighborhood or over your lunch break at work – walking is an underrated, excellent form of cardiovascular exercise. The more different options you sample, the more likely you are to find at least one – preferably a few – that you enjoy and can use to begin to build a lasting fitness routine.

Remember, you don’t have to do this alone. Recruit a friend to sample with you. Having a workout buddy (or two) greatly increases your chances of sticking with it.

Planning Ahead with Your Diet

What diet and health studies have shown is people tend to consume fewer total calories and eat more nutritionally balanced diets when they prepare their own meals at home. Our busy lives make it very difficult to accomplish this on a regular basis. Which is probably why Americans eat a large percentage of restaurant and take-out meals and store-bought processed foods.

A little planning and effort done on your least-scheduled day of the week (Saturday or Sunday for most people) can go a long way to accomplishing a full week of home-based, healthy meals.

Plan out meals, especially for the evenings that are your family’s busiest. Create a shopping list based on your plan and stick to your list at the grocery store. Be sure to plan quick and healthy foods for breakfasts, snacks and lunches, including those that need to be portable, and add those items to your list.

Here are links to previous posts with helpful tips for planning, shopping for and preparing nutritious meals at home:

When you do have the time to make a healthy meal from scratch at home, make extra. Leftovers can be refrigerated and saved for a super-busy weeknight, packaged in one-serving sizes and frozen for a quick meal in a pinch, or packed for lunches the next day.

This month is a tall order but I know you can do it. If you can plan out your exercise and meals each week this month, it will be easy to keep doing it week after week throughout the year. The more thorough your planning, the more likely you’ll be able to follow through with your plans.

Remember to keep your plans realistic. These should not be pie-in-the-sky wishes. They should reflect your abilities, likes and dislikes and, most importantly, your unique family schedule and lifestyle. What works for someone else may not work for you. Make a plan that works for you.

If you’re new to the Small Steps series, you can read about the philosophy and strategies of the series here. Know the Small Steps strategies don’t need to be done in any particular order and are independent of one another. So, you can begin the series with this post, continue throughout the rest of the year and pick up what you missed next year.